Deacon refuses to board Vertibird in 'Rockets' Red Glare' quest

I think I have the same bug as described here:

"A glitch may occur if Deacon is wearing power armor where he won't board the Vertibird".

I think Deacon is injured. He is just sitting by the door. He gave me the explosive charges but he refuses to board the Vertibird. The solution mentioned on the Fandom page is to reload a previous save, but what if I don't have one? I'm playing the game on PC.

Instead tfc, I just get close enough and check if it's the right ID with openactorcontainer 1 ; you'll want that open anyway if you're going to recycle them.

I'd try enable and disable, or dismissing them and completing the quest w/o them (or just drag them around with Companion whistle) and then try again, before I tried resetai or recycleactor, both of which can break quests.

I've had companions stuck in animation loops; never found a solution other than starting a new game, because if I'm going to lose ten hours, what's the difference.

If I really wanted to try and salvage that save, I'd look into where it all went wrong at the specific stage in the quest and 'go back one' :

How to do one step back in a quest “Molecular Level”?

SetStage <QuestID> <Quest stage number>

and

ResetQuest <QuestID>

"Warning: This command can potentially break a quest, with no way to move forward on that quest."

So again, it's time for a new game or forget about using Deacon for the remainder of this one. Because finding the right quest to mess with can be difficult, and you'll never be sure it didn't break something else.

That being said, the answer to your specific question is in the link.

This bug can also be fixed by typing the console command setstage RR303 1300

But what if you don't have an earlier save?

Then you haven't gotten into the habit of making a hard save archive every twenty minutes and in between every quick save, which you surely will now I hope. Welcome to the successor of the Gamebryo engine; the Creation Engine, the most pliable and capable engine ever created which is why it breaks so much.

1. Open the console (` key)
2. Enter the command tfc to move the camera separately from the player.
3. Leave the console
4. Move the camera (with the wasd keys) over to deacon
5. Enter the console again
6. Click on deacon
7. Enter the command recycleactor
8. Enter the command tfc to move the camera back to the player
9. Close the console